Slidell police report overall drop in crime for 4th straight year

Total major crimes reported last year in Slidell dipped for the fourth consecutive year, according to police statistics. In all, Slidell police investigated 1,644 incidents of reported crime last year, a 1 percent decrease from the 1,655 reported in 2010. The numbers, released by the Police Department on Wednesday, count the number of offenses reported in seven categories tracked by the FBI: homicide, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, theft and auto theft.

The Times-Picayune

There were notable increases from 2010 in the categories of robbery, burglary and assault, but decreases in rape, theft and auto theft resulted in the lowest overall number of serious infractions since at least 2002.

Assistant Police Chief Kevin Foltz credited the reductions to the department's philosophy of proactively cracking down on minor crimes as a means to bar graver incidents later. However, he added, the department also intends to re-evaluate its methods in hopes of choking off any jumps in unlawfulness.

"We looked to see if there was any main contributing factor or overall trends, but we couldn't attribute the increases to one specific thing," Foltz said. "In previous years these same categories have fluctuated."

The most significant upticks in documented crime, percentagewise, concerned burglary and robbery. There were 231 burglary cases last year, 54 more than in 2010, a 31 percent increase, the stats indicated. As for robberies, there were 32, up 52 percent from 21 in 2010.

Assaults went up 17 percent to 81. Although there were no homicides in 2010, one occurred in 2011: the slaying of 25-year-old Miguel Garcia, allegedly by his roommate, who was booked with second-degree murder. The last time there were more than three homicides in Slidell was in 2002, when there were four.

Auto thefts and rape constituted large dips percentagewise. Auto theft dropped 31 percent, from 77 to 53, and rape fell from 16 cases to 13, a 19 percent decline. There were 1,233 thefts documented in 2011 as opposed to 1,295 in 2010, a 5 percent reduction.

Foltz reiterated that Slidell police in 2012 will labor as much as possible for the categories of robbery, burglary, assault and homicide to go the way theft, auto theft and rape did in 2011.

"We'd love for them to be lower," he said. "Our ultimate goal is to continue to have crime reduced."